2010-06-01

Long weekend

I am not a big fan of long weekends on which I don't get to go vroom-vroom, so looking back on the past one I have to admit with a little bit of surprise that it was a good one.

On Saturday, I went to Lia and Bryan's wedding, and it was a beautiful one! It was also the first formal wedding I have ever been to, so I was not sure what to expect, but it was truly great.

There was no religious ceremony, instead there were readings from a number of books, including the Bible in one case. The couple looked so in love, and everyone could feel the importance of the moment when they were saying their vows.

After the wedding, I took Carlota to her place to pack, as she was flying out to NC the next morning, and then we proceeded to the Ninja Date Night, out at a bowling alley!

I played poorly, but enjoyed myself thoroughly, and met some great new friends.

On Sunday, Jason and I went to the Hiller Aviation Museum, and that's where all these pictures are from.

It was really interesting to see up close some of the original early flight machines.

Some of the older machinery was quite impressive for its time, and some was more scary than impressive. As an early aviator, you had to be a true daredevil to trust these rickety machines with your life.

This is just a small selection of the hundreds of model planes that were given to the museum by one person. And he built them all himself. They have a number of glass display cases full of models just like these. I cannot even begin to imagine the time and patience it took to build them all.

This was an early attempt at vertical flight, and supposedly a prototype of the same kind was tested in Germany "with limited success." Whatever that means. I find it hard to imagine that this thing would ever fly, but it has a lot of style to it.

Very steampunk.

After the museum, we went to Malibu Grand Prix outdoor karting track. That was not very exciting, because the karts did not go very fast, and were set up to brutally understeer no matter what. You could also not do flying laps and had to go back to grid after every lap and launch from the dead stop each time. They would space the karts in such a way as to make it impossible to catch up the the car ahead, eliminating any need to pass.

Nevertheless, Jason and I took first and second lap times respectively for the session, and likely for the day.

I guess this makes the long weekend no longer racing-free, but that's okay.